There is often no pill to swallow, but there is often one to chew

​I recently heard musical artist Jelly Roll talk about an experience in his dying dad's hospital room. A nurse came in and gave his dad a pill, and instead of swallowing the pill, like most would do, Jelly Roll's dad chewed it up and then swallowed.

Jelly Roll, caught a little off guard, asked him, "that doesn't bother you?"

His dad responded, "sometimes when a pill is too hard to swallow you just gotta chew it up."

It's interesting. I spent yesterday participating in a community gathering aimed at helping people gain a better understanding of addiction. And if I'm being honest, I can sometimes, often actually, leave these events far more hopeless than hopeful.

I leave that way because you leave understanding the rate and destructiveness with which addiction is overwhelming so many communities. You leave know that this destruction is spreading faster than awareness - the awareness these events aim to spread.

That hopelessness comes, I think, because I feel the overwhelming pain of a community and my heart longs for an overwhelming cure. An overwhelming healing. I want for a pill a community can swallow and make it all go away.

But that is not usually how healing comes about.

Healing comes from staying committed to chewing, taking one bite at a time, it comes from staying the course when the pill - the healing - looks too hard to swallow.

I think about all of my friends in southwest Virginia and western North Carolina trying to recover from the floods from hurricane Helene. And to them the recovery has to look like a pill too hard to swallow. How can repair ever be made of this?

And the answer is, sadly, not in one swallow. It will come from chewing. One bite at a time.

I have been there in my years of divorce recovery. Oh how I have looked for a pill to swallow and make it all better, to make life feel like healed instead of what too many days feels like a constant state of anxiously looking for it.

But that is usually not how healing comes about.

Healing comes from staying committed to chewing, taking one bite at a time, it comes from staying the course when the pill - the healing - looks too hard to swallow.

I was reminded yesterday that healing is also always found in people showing up. People showing up at community events. And more importantly, people showing up in the lives of those looking for a pill to swallow.

People who show up and remind the hurting that there is no pill to swallow for this one, but there is one to chew. And I am here to help you do the chewing.

A lot of people around us are struggling. They couldn't find a pill to swallow and they long ago gave up on chewing one. So we show up and take a couple of bites with them. Maybe even for them. Because in the end that's how healing happens.

Chewing.

Chewing, one bite at a time.